The “Irish Born” One American Citizenship Amendment

Our Constitution has a deferred maintenance problem because we have fallen out of the habit of tending to its upkeep ourselves. The silver lining is a double benefit from any constitutional maintenance projects that we undertake now. These projects are good not only for what they do to our Constitution, but also for making us exercise self-government muscles that have atrophied from civic sloth. Fortunately, the time has never been better to repeal one of our Constitution’s most pointlessly exclusionary provisions. The President of the United States is married to a naturalized citizen. And nobody can legitimately question the patriotism of the First Lady of the United States, Melania Trump. She flies on Air Force One with the President and represents our country both at home and abroad. As an American citizen, she is as much an American as the President himself. This fortuitous circumstance is just one reason it might be possible to eliminate what the Supreme Court has identified as the only legal difference between naturalized and natural born citizens— eligibility for the presidency

Summary of the effects of engine throttle response on airplane formation-flying qualities

A flight evaluation was conducted to determine the effect of engine throttle response characteristics on precision formation-flying qualities. A variable electronic throttle control system was developed and flight-tested on a TF-104G airplane with a J79-11B engine at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility. This airplane was chosen because of its known, very favorable thrust response characteristics. Ten research flights were flown to evaluate the effects of throttle gain, time delay, and fuel control rate limiting on engine handling qualities during a demanding precision wing formation task. Handling quality effects of lag filters and lead compensation time delays were also evaluated. The Cooper and Harper Pilot Rating Scale was used to assign levels of handling quality. Data from pilot ratings and comments indicate that throttle control system time delays and rate limits cause significant degradations in handling qualities. Threshold values for satisfactory (level 1) and adequate (level 2) handling qualities of these key variables are presented. These results may provide engine manufacturers with guidelines to assure satisfactory handling qualities in future engine designs

The Rural Development Programme (2007-2013) and Farmer Innovation: A Review to Date and Look to the Future

working paperThis paper seeks to comment on farmer innovation in relation to the measures within the Rural Development Programme (2007-2013). Evidence is presented on the general extent of innovation among farmers and the specific uptake of measures within Axes 1, 2 and 3 of the RDP. Changes to, and curtailment of, measures within the various Axes since the inception of the RDP until April 2010 are identified. Following a discussion of some of the internal and external factors that promote or hinder farmer innovation and participation with the Axes, suggestions are made about how to increase farmer engagement with the RDP. It is concluded that for the remainder of the RDP, certain bureaucratic barriers, governance issues, resource issues, training needs, and research gaps must be addressed if farm households are to innovate to the extent that they are expected to as a result of the RD

Formation and Evolution of Binary Asteroids

Satellites of asteroids have been discovered in nearly every known small body population, and a remarkable aspect of the known satellites is the diversity of their properties. They tell a story of vast differences in formation and evolution mechanisms that act as a function of size, distance from the Sun, and the properties of their nebular environment at the beginning of Solar System history and their dynamical environment over the next 4.5 Gyr. The mere existence of these systems provides a laboratory to study numerous types of physical processes acting on asteroids and their dynamics provide a valuable probe of their physical properties otherwise possible only with spacecraft. Advances in understanding the formation and evolution of binary systems have been assisted by: 1) the growing catalog of known systems, increasing from 33 to nearly 250 between the Merline et al. (2002) Asteroids III chapter and now, 2) the detailed study and long-term monitoring of individual systems such as 1999 KW4 and 1996 FG3, 3) the discovery of new binary system morphologies and triple systems, 4) and the discovery of unbound systems that appear to be end-states of binary dynamical evolutionary paths. Specifically for small bodies (diameter smaller than 10 km), these observations and discoveries have motivated theoretical work finding that thermal forces can efficiently drive the rotational disruption of small asteroids. Long-term monitoring has allowed studies to constrain the system's dynamical evolution by the combination of tides, thermal forces and rigid body physics. The outliers and split pairs have pushed the theoretical work to explore a wide range of evolutionary end-states.Comment: 42 pages, 4 figures, contribution to the Asteroids 4 boo

Performance improvements of an F-15 airplane with an integrated engine-flight control system

An integrated flight and propulsion control system has been developed and flight demonstrated on the NASA Ames-Dryden F-15 research aircraft. The highly integrated digital control (HIDEC) system provides additional engine thrust by increasing engine pressure ratio (EPR) at intermediate and afterburning power. The amount of EPR uptrim is modulated based on airplane maneuver requirements, flight conditions, and engine information. Engine thrust was increased as much as 10.5 percent at subsonic flight conditions by uptrimming EPR. The additional thrust significantly improved aircraft performance. Rate of climb was increased 14 percent at 40,000 ft and the time to climb from 10,000 to 40,000 ft was reduced 13 percent. A 14 and 24 percent increase in acceleration was obtained at intermediate and maximum power, respectively. The HIDEC logic performed fault free. No engine anomalies were encountered for EPR increases up to 12 percent and for angles of attack and sideslip of 32 and 11 degrees, respectively

Rotor blade aerodynamic design

Aerodynamic performance aspects of rotor blade design are presented. Design considerations, aerodynamic constraints and design variables are described